The Public Helped Take AI’s Early Risk. It Deserves a Dividend.

When public grants, labs, universities, or taxpayer-funded research help shoulder AI’s early risk, it’s odd to treat the upside as an investors-only boarding pass. I read the terms: innovation deserves a reward, but the public shouldn’t be the silent partner that helped build the runway and got left at the gate.

An American dividend is a proposal, not an existing policy or settled funding plan. Still, if the public helped pay for takeoff, it deserves more than a thank-you and an in-flight safety card while private investors get the view from first class. Big Tech can call that innovation; ordinary people might ask who picked up the tab—and why they weren’t invited to share the return.